27 July 2014 12:13 AM

Israel exists only because quite a lot of people hate Jews for being Jews, and sometimes that hate turns into murder.

It is a place where Jews can go when other people want to kill them for being what they are, not for what they do, and when nobody else will take them in.

But it also exists because we in Britain set up a Jewish ‘national home’ in what was then our colony of Palestine, though we spent the next 30 years trying to go back on our word.

And it also exists because when we were too poor to hang on to our empire and quit Palestine in 1948 – leaving it in bloody, unfinished disarray – the USA backed the Jewishstate that emerged from the mess.

It may all have been a terrible mistake. I’m not sure what choice there was back then. But it is there, like many other lingering injustices done in the 1940s, in India and centralEurope, and it seems to me that wise and civilised people should try to accept it and make it work.

The alternative is endless blood and screams, stretching for miles and for years.

I made up my mind some years back, after many visits to the region, very much including the West Bank and Gaza, that the only honest position a British person could take was absolute defence of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. It must be that, or it cannot serve its grim ultimate purpose as a refuge against hate. And that once that is accepted, everything possible must be done to improve the position of the Arabs in the region.

It’s not always easy. Israel’s government and army have done and still do many wicked and stupid things. Its small elite is not really up to the huge responsibilities it faces. But I’m not budging.And it is from that position that I say Israel’s attack on Gaza is idiotic, wrong and probably fatal to the future of the state its leaders claim to be defending.

Hamas, still clinging to its increasingly unpopular rule in Gaza, is overjoyed by Israel’s moronic, babyish response. It is all they dreamed of.

The world’s TV screens are full of pictures of dead and wounded women and children, weeping, gore and rubble – exactly what Hamas hoped to provoke.

Israel may bray that it did not intend to do this. I’m sure it didn’t. But if you shell and bomb a confined space such as Gaza, it will happen, and shame on you if you pretend that it’s not your fault when it does.

It is ludicrous to claim that this action, which makes future conflict certain, protects Israel in any way.

The fate of Israel will be decided in people’s minds, in countries like ours, and on TV screens, not by bullets and high explosive. Each episode of this kind makes that future more doubtful.

It is an illusion that a violent toughness is the only answer to threats. The really strong and brave man knows when to hold back.

Just as it would have been more sensible to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza when they captured them in 1967, it would have been far, far better to let the Hamas rockets fall, to shelter from them and to let the world see how much better Israel is than its aggressive despotic neighbours.

But the chance was missed, and it may, alas, have been missed for ever.

Having lived all my life in a world that was largely sensible and reasonable, I sense that the bad times are on the way back.

Peaches: poisoned by pious rubbish

Did you help Peaches Geldof to die? Quite possibly. Everyone who lazily accepts the conventional wisdom about drugs played a part in this and many other similar tragedies.

Many years ago, we decided to treat heroin abuse as an illness. We wouldn’t punish those who did it. Instead, we ‘treated’ them, in many cases by mugging taxpayers to give them free drugs.

Most people still agree on the idea that the drug user is a victim. The main problem with it is that it’s not true. The next problem is that it makes it much easier for people to become drug abusers.

I don’t believe in ‘addiction’, but I’ll leave that for another time. Even if I did, it would only strengthen my point. If it really is true that once you start taking heroin you can never stop again until you die, shouldn’t we be devoting huge efforts to making sure nobody ever starts?

And wouldn’t a severe deterrent law, one which (for a change) we actually enforced, be the best way of doing that? A few examples work wonders in changing people’s behaviour, as we found when the breathalyser and seat-belts came in.

If we’d very publicly locked up a few famous heroin abusers in the 1960s and 1970s, there’d be many fewer of them – famous or obscure – now. Because we didn’t, there are plenty more of these cases to come, plenty more ruined lives, plenty more orphans and plentymore pious rubbish.

So what’s boosted Ukraine’s army? Yoga?

I'm pleased to see that the wild, simple-minded anti-Russian hysteria of last weekend has cooled a bit, as the complicated truth has emerged and the intelligence briefings have calmed down.

I trust our Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, has had a moment to lie down in a darkened room with a cold compress, reconsidering his outburst about ‘state-sponsored terror’. He’s probably found out by now that his colleagues have scrapped or sacked most of our Armed Forces, making his belligerence look funny to anyone in the know.

By the way, I am quite sure that Russia has been helping the rebels in Ukraine. It’s obvious.

But it’s also fairly obvious that Ukraine’s revolutionary government, which came to power in an EU and American-backed mob putsch in February, is getting help too.

Who from? Perhaps they’re doing yoga or taking vitamin pills, but your guess is as good as mine.

A few months ago, they were a decrepit shambles. Now they’re fighting and winning a violent battle to regain Luhansk and Donetsk. And it is very violent. Credible sources (local doctors) believe that 250 civilians have been killed and 850 wounded in Luhansk alone, during June and July.

Much of this is the result of the shelling and bombing of populated areas (just like Gaza) by ‘our’ side.

If you have any moral outrage left over after last week, you might want to expend it on that fact.

***

What I don’t understand is why it is supposed to be good for British politicians to humble themselves in the White House before whoever happens to be President of that foreign and not specially friendly country.

I suspect that the first party leader to say he doesn’t want such a visit will win the hearts and minds of the British people.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

NB, owing to a technical error, comments were closed on this item until about 2.20 pm. The error has now been corrected.

I agree but... think it would be fair to say that there are two societies running alongside each other already...those who have pushed are pushing for a liberal agenda and those who are pushing for a stronger deterrent, because they have and are dealing with the fallout.
They are still not being heard...yet. Voices are falling on closed ears. The cost of helping just one young person in money and man womanpower in all the services that I have witnessed is phenomenal. Let alone the input from an older generation of family. Challenges they face when they know drug use is just up the park, in a house a few streets away, or from older users.

*** "Everyone who lazily accepts the conventional wisdom about drugs played a part in this and many other similar tragedies." ***

Quite.

*** "wouldn’t a severe deterrent law, one which (for a change) we actually enforced, be the best way of doing that?" ***

Actually, no it wouldn't.

The best way of pointing out the idiocies of liberalism is to have two seperate societies running next to each other; one run on social conservatism and the other on social liberalism. People will then be able to see first hand the degeneration and decay wrought by the latter and no laws would be needed regarding such.

Mike Barnes "Am I right in assuming Hamas was voted in as the legal governing entity, for Gaza.
Democracy in action . How I wish we had democracy like that here."

They threw their political opponents off high rise buildings but yes, the people of Gaza believed the Hamas line in 2005 that their violence is proven to work because they got Jews kicked out, so in 2006 the people of Gaza voted for Jihadists, who state in their charter (and utterly refuse to amend), "Israel will continue to exist until Islam annhiliate it". The people of Gaza thought they were going to get the spoils of war instead they got this.

@ BenS
On PH's latest post he has taken note of your desire. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You obviously find Mr P's comment to your taste. Others do not .Me I find them a tad tedious . using 500 words when 50 would suffice.

@ John Thomas
You give me two quite unrealistic choices .There must be somewhere in the middle where crime is punished. and beauty adored . Today as you point out the reverse is true, crime is not punished and beauty turned into pornography. So not I do not like the way things are . And will fight on for an improvement.
Sometimes hope is not enough. a push is required.

@ Mike Barnes. Thanks for you response. Sure, things were harsh in many ways, in the past, life was hard. (it's always a mistake to think of a possible golden age in the past - but worse to think there could possibly be one in the future - that way lies totalitarianism). But civilisation, and a civilised society, shouldn't be just things to do with law, crime and punishment. Many people, looking at "the arts" today, would see clear evidence of the collapse and degradation of everything. But which would you want to live under, a state that puts 4 or 5 convicted criminals to death per year, or one which facilitates the killing of 820 innocent people per working DAY. I know which I'd choose ...

"I'm well aware of UN resolution 181. But I do think that arms might have been involved in some (estimated) 750,000 Arabs 'departing' from the territory that became Israel...."

Yes, this is true enough. The 'clearances' which accompanied the 1948 War of Independence are a documented blemish on the Israeli transition to statehood. Arms were indeed employed, somewhat forcefully. Ref Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. I took your 'win by force of arms' to mean 'by right of conquest'. Israel claimed statehood by right of UN resolution.

As to Israel admitting any of this and owning up to some horrendous atrocities it reportedly perpetrated, I don't know that they haven't. I know only that I have never heard any Israeli politician acknowledging these things. This is the great Age of Apologies so perhaps Israel should get round to some of its own. It would at least permit proper bonding with Western societies which are forever apologising for the sins of their fathers.

@ john Thomas.
That ordered society was pretty repressive. The police were feared by even the innocent .Prison sentences heavy to say the least . I remember an assault on a bus conductor. The villain sent down 14 year hard labour. back in the fifties.
Now I'm quite comfortable about pre sixties sentencing . But it wasn't a bed of roses either.

"Gaza has been blockaded by the Israeli regime since June of 2007,a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, massive levels of unemployment resulting in unrelenting poverty."

The blockade of Gaza is in force in an attempt to stop Hamas importing weapons with which to terrorise Israelis. If Hamas had not done this there would be no blockade. Egypt also blockades Gaza by air, sea and land.

The IDF said it completed an investigation into the shelling on Thursday of an UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, and found that Hamas terrorists fired at the army from within the school complex. The terrorists fired anti-tank missiles at soldiers, the army added.

The IDF fired several mortar rounds in response. One IDF mortar fell in a yard near the school, which was empty, according to the military.

It is indeed very sad that both Paula Yates and her daughter died taking drugs. That said, it may be that legalising drugs is a realistic way to reduce deaths and misery, let alone the cost of the phoney "war on drugs" legalise them and take control. Otherwise, there needs to be a complete change in attitude of young people that will make them never to want to take drugs at all. It has to come from them as you rarely get adults suddenly taking up a drug habit. In the same way that they have thoroughly swallowed the idea of global warming and seek to nag their parents into recycling and so on, they need a similar thought change about drugs. I don't know how this could be achieved. The last silly nonsense the government came up with - "Frank" would be derided by any self respecting teen and rightly so since it was more of a "how to do it" than "don't do it, type of mass indoctrination attempt. You don't hear much about it now.
Legalising drugs also presents difficulties since all drugs are not the same. Most of them are mentally addictive but opiates are mentally and physically addictive. I know Peter doesn't like the idea of addiction, I'm not sure why that is? I totally understand that he disputes the idea that addiction is a disease. I completely agree that it is not a disease. It is a condition though. But not one that cannot be got rid of. Addicts are not destined to be addicts their whole lives for as long as they live. They will either die, or give up. Both are possible. Legalisation would solve some problems if it was done sensibly and would be beneficial in terms of crime and prison population etc and the revenue could be used to treat or provide medical help to addicts. It would also take away the danger involved in buying drugs from ruthless people.
Whichever way, the sheer numbers of people who take drugs worldwide in some form or another is too great to be controlled even with tough law enforcement. Look at prohibition in the States, it didn't work at all.
It seems to me that tobacco and alcohol muddy the waters. Both are highly dangerous especially tobacco related deaths so where is the outrage there? There isn't as much as there is towards illegal drugs because society accepts these two drugs for some reason.

"A two state solution will never happen when you are dealing with ... Hamas who will not settle for anything less than the complete annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people ... (John Girvan) - Yes, quite (and not only Hamas [dedicated to removing Israel and all Jews], but every other Muslim state/organisation). So why oh why do so many sane people and organisations (even the Vatican, apparently) say "a two-state solution is the only way forward"? Muslims will never, can never, countenance recognising Israel. There can never be, will never be "two states".

I'm well aware of UN resolution 181. But I do think that arms might have been involved in some (estimated) 750,000 Arabs 'departing' from the territory that became Israel, and that there was a documented, detailed series of plans for the military achievement of this objective.

As I've said before I'm a supporter of Israel, for what that's worth, and accept that almost all territory on Earth was at some time taken by force. But why not admit it?
The unhappy Middle-Eastern situation is at least in part a British legacy. It can't have been easy to leave such a mess while leaving both sides feeling betrayed.

I defer to few in admiration for Peter Hitchens but he is not omnipotent. Even he gets it wrong sometimes. The fate of Israel will not be decided in people’s minds by people like us watching TV. We watch TV all the time, we disagree with much that we see, but we are powerless to decide anything. Why should the fate of Israel be an exception to that rule? And is it true that the strong and brave know when to hold back? Were the European settlers of the American west strong and brave? What of the British in Tasmania (the most successful genocide of modern times)? How strong and brave were the Romans (in Judea, to give a pertinent example, where they removed it from the map)? History is full of examples where the strong and brave solved their problems by not holding back.

Tanya "Gaza has been blockaded by the Israeli regime since June of 2007,a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living,massive levels of unemployment resulting in unrelenting poverty."

The facts put these charges to rest – just take a look at how much aid Israel regularly delivers to Gaza, and what it means in real terms for Gazans:

Over one million tons of humanitarian supplies were delivered by Israel to the people of Gaza in the past 18 months – that’s equal to nearly one ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza.

In the first quarter Israel delivered 94,500 tons of supplies to Gaza. It’s very easy to miss what that actually means for the people of Gaza. The breakdown includes:

40,000 tons of wheat – which is equal to 53 million loaves of bread;
2,760 tons of rice – which equals 69 million servings;
1,987 tons of clothes and footwear – the equivalent weight of 3.6 million pairs of jeans; and
553 tons of milk powder and baby food – equivalent to over 3.1 million days of formula for an average six-month-old baby.

Gaza is a great big welfare state that receives massive amounts of handouts it never pays for while 22000 children starve each day in places where Islam have no expansionist agenda.

" Why are Palestinians, uniquely, denied their national identity and and a link with a geographical place? Perhaps because someone else wants their land."

They are not, they have an arab state its called Jordan.
You cannot just have some guy from Egypt turning up in the 1970s and inventing a fictional nationalism (that has NEVER existed in history), I mean Arafat, just because it is the best Jihadist technique possible to remove Jews from the middle east, along with their self created and manufactured refugee problem.

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